Monday February 20, 2023
COMMENTARY: Remote work and the future of Fredericksburg | ANALYSIS: Censorship, fragility, and the damage to education | OBSERVED: Moment | LETTER TO THE EDITOR | PUBLICATION: Schedule
COMMENTARY: Remote work and the future of Fredericksburg
By Will Mackintosh
It’s no secret that the pandemic has upended the way a lot of white-collar workers do their jobs. Discussions of the “turn to remote work” dominate our media and conversations in corporate boardrooms. If you do the kind of work than can be done from home, there’s a good chance that your work life has not fully returned to the form it took before the pandemic, whether in a longstanding job or a new one. The consensus of economists, business leaders, and white collar workers themselves seems to be that remote work, at least in some form, is here to stay.
Back in April 2021, I wrote a piece on my personal blog trying to think through the implications of this shift for Fredericksburg. Now, almost two years later, I’d like to return to the assumptions and predictions that I made in the immediate aftermath of the most acute stage of the pandemic and see which ones still hold up and to reconsider what we might expect for Fredericksburg going forward.
In 2021, I assumed that the full-time work-from-home model that dominated the white collar sector in 2020 and 2021 would generally be replaced by “hybrid” models in which employees would return to the office a few days a week or a few days a month and work from home the rest of the time. I argued that such a scenario could potentially bring huge numbers of hybrid workers to a place like Fredericksburg, which is close enough to the major white-collar employment centers of Washington DC to make an occasional commute easy but still far enough away to offer meaningful improvements in affordability and quality of life, at least for those workers who are looking for the unique brand of small-city urbanism that we do so well. Conventional wisdom in 2021 held that the turn to remote work had the potential to revitalize more remote and economically depressed regions of the country, as white collar workers newly freed from the office moved in search of affordable homes and proximity to nature. I thought that conventional wisdom was wrong, or at least overstated, and that places like Fredericksburg would be the main destinations of an unleashed white collar workforce.
In 2023, it turns out that I was partly wrong and partly right. New research by the economist Adam Ozimek predicts that over the next five years 27.7% of the white collar workforce will be fully remote, whereas 20.4% will be working partly in the office and partly remote. That’s a higher percentage of fully remote workers than I would have guessed, which means that more white collar workers will be fully untethered from the major centers of white collar employment like DC. As you might expect, the prevalence of fully remote work means that remote workers are contemplating longer moves than they otherwise might. Other work by Ozimek suggests that some 18.9 million Americans are considering moving because of their shift to remote work, and of these people, 28% are considering moving more than four hours away. While this is a much larger number than I would have guessed a couple of years ago, it still means that 72% are considering locating within a 4-hour radius of their job. And Fredericksburg is definitely within a 4-hour radius of millions of white collar jobs in the broader DC metro area. Hybrid work is turning out to be less prevalent than I thought, but the majority of workers who are considering relocating as a result of a shift to remote work are considering regions like ours, within striking distance of major white collar employment centers.
Another Ozimek study, this time for the Economic Innovation Group (and highlighted by Fredericksburg’s Department of Economic Development and Tourism), reinforces this point. This study ranks US cities by percentage of their workforce that is working remotely. The metro area with the high percentage of remote workers is Washington DC, where almost 34% of the workforce works remotely. Crucially, Fredericksburg was one of only three cities with less than a million people to crack the top 25; according to this study, 22% of our workforce works remotely. What this study suggests is that cities with a lot of white collar jobs have a lot of remote workers, and most remote workers don’t move away from the major metro area where their job is located. But for those who do choose to move to a smaller city as a result of their more flexible schedule, they overwhelmingly choose smaller cities that are close to major metro areas, places like Fredericksburg (or Wilmington, DE, another sub-1,000,000 person city on the top 25).
Long story short, my gut prediction in 2021 that the shift to remote work could have a major impact on Fredericksburg is looking like it was fundamentally correct. The fact that we are mentioned in the same breath as San Francisco, Austin, or Seattle as a national hotspot for remote workers is really remarkable.
The question, then as now, is what should we do about it? We can’t fight this kind of national macroeconomic trend, nor should we. The shift to remote work offers remarkable opportunity for our citizens. It means that people in our region who have gotten used to slogging up and down I-95 for their 9-to-5 can potentially recapture hours of their day, leading to massive improvements in their quality of life. Those remote workers now spending their day at home will buy their coffees in our coffeeshops and their lunches in our restaurants, meaning that small business owners in Fredericksburg will reap the economic benefit of keeping our people’s spending at home. The shift to remote will give our citizens a massively increased pool of potential jobs to apply for, many of which are paying Northern Virginia salaries. For those who never wanted to commute, this is a moment of new opportunity. Even if we could shield Fredericksburg from the implications of this shift to remote work, I don’t think we should. But we can’t anyway, so the debate of should or shouldn’t is pointless.
So the real question is how to do we adapt to this changing landscape of white collar work in ways that makes Fredericksburg a better place to live. I think we can take several concrete steps. First, we need to make sure that we are meeting the affordable housing needs of our citizens. If newly remote workers relocating to Fredericksburg further drives up our cost of living, then they risk displacing longtime residents. We need to make sure that we are supplied with enough housing for everyone so that growth doesn’t mean displacement. Second, we need to support existing and new small businesses in their efforts to serve this expanding customer base. Ensuring that those healthy Northern Virginia salaries circulate within our community is key to making sure that the prosperity of those new remote workers is broadly shared. Finally, we need to make sure our schools, from our high schools through Germanna and UMW, are offering our young people the skills necessary to take advantage of this wider scope of opportunity. Encouraging certificate programs in fields like network engineering and cybersecurity will help us ensure that no one gets left behind.
Like all attempts to peer into the future, this conversation is all ultimately speculative. But we are far enough away from the acute stage of the pandemic that we have some data that suggest that the shift to remote work is real, and that it is having an outsized effect on Fredericksburg. And that alone should be enough for us to act.
Will Mackintosh teaches at the University of Mary Washington and heads the Economic Development Authority. He lives in Fredericksburg.
ANALYSIS: Censorship, fragility, and the damage to education
by Martin Davis
Let the conservatives howl - they are right - about the reworking of the writings of Roald Dahl.
The Roald Dahl Story Company is working with Inclusive Minds, as described in Sunday’s Washington Post, to rewrite Dahl’s classic children’s books to make them more inclusive. Among the changes, according to the story in the Post, are the following:
The character of Augustus Gloop from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is no longer described as “fat.” Now he is referred to as “enormous.” What was described as a “weird African language” in the book “The Twits” is no longer weird. In “The BFG,” a reference to the character of the “Bloodbottler” having skin that was “reddish-brown” has been removed.
Some characters are now gender-neutral. The singing and dancing Oompa Loompas from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” were once described as “small men”; now they are “small people.” In “James and the Giant Peach,” the Cloud-Men — mysterious figures who live in the sky — are now known as Cloud-People.
In some cases, new lines were added. In “The Witches,” a paragraph that explains that the witches are bald underneath their wigs has a new sentence: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”
The right-wing media machine is gearing up. PJ Media calls this move “a 1619 Project on Literature.” And the New York Post bemoans “sensitivity experts” going after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera have been, as of this writing, quiet about the whole affair. Let’s hope they break their silence on Monday. Those of us who favor not shielding children from words that seem to make their parents quake in their boots would welcome their denouncing this callous rewriting of Dahl’s works.
As conservatives rightly cast stones, however, they might toss a few their own way.
For in practice, there is no real distinction between what progressives are doing to Dahl’s works (as well as the works of Mark Twain and others) and what conservatives are doing to books that have language they deem sexually offensive, or curricula they deem “woke” because it talks about the reality of systemic racism.
In fact, over the past two years in our region, conservatives have been on a censorship tear. In Spotsylvania County, parents with paper-thin skin are removing books from library shelves as quickly as they can skim the pages to find the dirty words that trigger an official evaluation for age-appropriateness.
And Youngkin has relentlessly worked to remove any reference to Blacks in U.S. history that doesn’t square with his very narrow worldview - Slavery was “bad,” but America is now free of racism and we must never speak of it again lest it make some white child feel the least bit uncomfortable.
Education is the real target
Simply pointing out that liberals and conservatives are hypocrites on this issue of censorship, however, isn’t enough.
Stopping here leads us into the flaccid world of false equivalency, which contends that “both sides do it.” When we take this approach, nothing changes. Rather, we are permitted to double-down on our own desire to rewrite history/literature/science/whatever to fit our own distorted views of reality because we feel a need to correct the errors of the other side.
And as the debate over Dahl’s work worldwide, and sexuality in literature here in our community and across the nation shows, what we really fear is education.
Consider the writings of Dahl. Yes, by today’s standards, using terms like “fat” and “small men” and “weird African” will raise eyebrows among certain sectors and probably spark debate about body image, gender, and stereotyping non-Western cultures. Fair enough.
But stripping those words from Dahl’s work is an act of political fervor meant to set our own age as the model by which all others are to be judged (conveniently forgetting that in 50 or 100 years, future generations will probably be as appalled by our language and discussions and are those stripping Dahl of his voice).
Conservatives are right to complain about canceling the voices of the past. But progressives are equally right about conservative efforts to cancel the voices of today.
Youngkin and Guidera and the Spotsylvania School Board may find race and sexuality uncomfortable topics, but rest assured that for today’s scholars and more K-12 students than many are comfortable acknowledging, race and sexuality are very real issue that shape their development and thought.
The efforts to stifle such discussions is no more acceptable than the efforts to stifle the voices of dead writers. Let the words and debates flow.
Reading Dahl and recognizing that some of his language makes us uncomfortable allows us to understand how shameful language damages people and limits opportunity. In the same way, labeling discussions of race and sexuality today as “woke” prevents us from hearing the voices of those who are growing up on the frontlines of a world that has changed radically since their parents were in school.
Somewhere along the line, we’ve lost an appreciation for what education is, and what it’s meant to be.
It’s not an endgame that one masters, but a process that keeps us questioning and exploring for the rest of our lives. It’s not about imposing a moral compass, it’s about teaching people to examine what they believe is true, and genuinely wrestle with the strengths and limits of that worldview.
For the truth is, we don’t know where we’re going - and if we were to live 1,000 years, we would never find the answer.
Dahl knew that.
“There’s no earthly way of knowing Which direction they are going! There’s no knowing where they’re rowing, Or which way the river’s flowing! Not a speck of light is showing, So the danger must be growing, For the rowers keep on rowing, And they’re certainly not showing Any signs that they are slowing. . . .”
-Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The answer is to exploring, keep working. For when we stop and paint a false picture ground in our fears, we will be consumed by all that we fear.
Observed
There’s nothing like living in the moment. And there’s a new diner in Fredericksburg committed to helping us do that at mealtime - Moment.
Located at 1201 Emancipation Highway, Moment focuses on all-day breakfast and lunch/dinner plates built around American favorites. Open, airy, and spacious, Moment allows you to stretch out, enjoy your food, and engage in conversation with your dining partners.
If there’s a downside, the moment ends at 3 pm each day. Here’s hoping that as the business takes hold the moment to dine there will be whenever the desire strikes.
Check on the menus.
Letter to the Editor
‘An Honest Discussion’ spurs thoughts
We should know Americans may be the least patient people on earth. Chinese and Persians, as examples, are exceptionally patient, for generation-after-generation pecking away a little at a time in pursuit of their long-term goals.
Your comments [“An Honest Discussion” - Education] make me think about the wisdom (likely unintentional) of Democrats (liberals) pecking away generation-after-generation helping countless Americans in their quest for better lives. At the same time, Republicans (conservatives) seemed to have been focused on their own pocketbooks with little regard to their fellow Americans who, as they say, can make it . . . look at us, we did.
But then a 'sudden' revelation came upon conservatives. Kind of a tortoise and hare moment. While the conservatives were busy building a large lead, they ignored the pecking persistence of the liberals. Panic seems to have set in to the point of outrageous unreasonableness.
I think the conservatives would be far better served to have reasonable, persistent, civil people evangelizing their cause who can win honest debates. In other words, those who can master the middle ground. Loud-mouthed, boorish creatures, such as the Spotsylvania School Board majority, inflict far more harm to conservatives than good because they create tsunamis of resistance that disrupts the work of the conservatives. Not too different than trying to extinguish a house fire with gasoline. The intention was just fine. The execution was poor.
The public gifts to the schools policy has been around for 35+ years, with five revisions not hampering the public's ability to donate snacks and other food to the neediest of children. What scientific revelations occurred the past 1, 3, 5, 10, or 20 years to support the proposition that good people donating food to needy children increases the risk of poisoning children? The substance of the proposed changes to policy KH is not food safety, it is retaliation against the SB majority critics who seek to help hungry children. The SB majority is not the least bit adroit, which is as gentle as I can describe my observations.
-Ron Fiske
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